The Ultimate Tomcat as NT Service How-To

[Christian Rauh <ch...@rauh.net>]

To the Tomcat active developers and everyone else,

Well, I don´t have "The Ultimate Tomcat as NT Service How-To" either.
But I think someone must write one soon because this list is being
flooded with the same questions over and over.

It seems to me that there is a big documentation issue here. All this
people, including me, cannot be all stupid. Many people are trying to
make the Windows+Apache+Tomcat install and are having great trouble with
this. This is happening because of one of two things: 

  - the documentation is not good enough
  - the process is too complex

In either case there must be a solution: create the docs or simplify the
process. It seems to me that Tomcat 4 adressess some of these issues but
I am not sure. If I had the knowledge I would definetely write the docs,
but I don´t.

BTW, I have installed Tomcat as a service on Win2k but had trouble in
Win NT4 with the same process.

Thanks for the attention,

Christian Rauh

Re: The Ultimate Tomcat as NT Service How-To

[Alex Fernández <af...@tid.es>]

Hi Christian!

Christian Rauh wrote:

> To the Tomcat active developers and everyone else,
>
> Well, I don´t have "The Ultimate Tomcat as NT Service How-To" either.
> But I think someone must write one soon because this list is being
> flooded with the same questions over and over.

You're right.

> It seems to me that there is a big documentation issue here. All this
> people, including me, cannot be all stupid. Many people are trying to
> make the Windows+Apache+Tomcat install and are having great trouble with
> this. This is happening because of one of two things:
>
>   - the documentation is not good enough
>   - the process is too complex

Both points seem true enough.

> In either case there must be a solution: create the docs or simplify the
> process. It seems to me that Tomcat 4 adressess some of these issues but
> I am not sure. If I had the knowledge I would definetely write the docs,
> but I don´t.

You have surely read the answers to the most common questions. You can try
them out, compile the right ones into a document and send it to the list. Or
you can complain about it and do nothing.

Most of us choose the third option, but anyone -- mark you, anyone -- can do
the job. In fact, there are several kind guys who have come up with similar
things. Now you can say, why don't *you* write the FAQ document.

This is a question of priorities. Mine are quite far from that, I think I
can be more useful reviewing code and testing the platform, and I've already
volunteered for that. As a general rule, developers hate writing user
documentation, and since this is volunteer work, they aren't compelled to do
it in their spare time. It's probably up to users (if this is going to work
as a community) to document the system from the user's point of view. In
this particular system, users are also developers, and I think that is the
reason of the problems you perceived.

So, as Jon Stevens *might* say, "stop whining and get to work" :)  You can
get involved in the Tomcat community as soon (and as deeply) as you want.

Cheers,

Alex.